Andy Ramblings

Warning, this is Geekdom!

I've been pondering on this for the past few weeks, how can I make my backups faster onto my NAS drive (Network Attached Storage), I've had one that runs at a normal office LAN speed of 100Mbps. This is fine if you copying files or opening files from a NAS drive, it's when you want to do a big 150GB backup, that this just takes hours! I, for one, am not a great person for waiting for things to happen, well, OK, only in computers, I like things to, you know, happen.

So, I checked the specs of my PC, and noted that it's able to go at 1000Mbps, ie 10 times faster than the current normal LAN speed. An idea forms in my wee brain, If, I can have a network that runs at 1000Mbps then doing these backups should be a hell of a lot faster. Now I needed to check what I would need, so formed my shopping list.

• 3 x cat6 cable
• 1X Gigabit hub
• 1x NAS drive

The cabling is important, OK, I got CAT6 I could have using CAT5e, but better have top notch cable, and have future speed potential of 10Gbps. Always better to have more than less in this case.

Next, the hub, yes, for your gigabit lan, you can't use your normal ADSL router as that only runs at 100Mbps not matter what you try and do, it just won't run at 1000Mbps. I got the Netgear GS605 (info on hub here and you can buy it here.) pretty cheap and well, very easy to setup, just plug it in, power it up and off you go. OK, you need to get that old cable that was connected to your PC, from the ADSL router and put that into the Netgear GS605, otherwise, you won't have access to the internet!

And finally, you need the NAS drive. There are a lot out there but a few that are good. I checked out the following:

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Ok folks, some of you are/maybe having problems with adding comments to my, well, world famous, blog!

As I is a very busy techie guy, I will have to find some time to work out what could be causing this problem.

So if you get an error along the lines of /www/se/bundled-libs/PEAR.php on line 848

Then that's the techie problem I'm having, It will take a while to fix as time isn't something I have a lot of these days.

So bear with me while I try and find what's causing the above error as at the moment I haven't a clue what's causing it!

Thanks,

Ok folks, Spammers and their likes have a tendency to try and get you to read e-mails. Some of you may or may not have noticed that there has been a change it the types of spam you are getting. The latest ones will try and convince you that they have some Good/oh My God terrible news about the storms that we have had over here in Europe over the past week, No this is not a weather report.

SO,  What is Small.Dam?

During the last 48hrs virus writers have been taking advantage of the winter storms in Europe to launch a new wave of attacks on computers around the globe.

This particular attack trys to get the user to "execute" a malicious file attached to an email that contains a Trojan horse.

The email and its attachment pose as information about the dreadful weather that Europe has currently been experiencing.

(Something I can personally vouch for as a roofing contractor has only just left my house after replacing tiles blown off in the strong winds!)

The Trojan is being distributed in emails with messages subjects like:

- 230 dead as storm batters Europe.
- British Muslims Genocide
- Naked teens attack home director.
- A killer at 11, he's free at 21 and kill again!
- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has kicked German Chancellor Angela Merkel

The email will have an attachment  that contains the Small.DAM Trojan.

The attachments may contain one of the following filenames:

- Full Clip.exe
- Full Story.exe
- Read More.exe
- Video.exe

Source

Basically, If you didn't ask for e-mails about the weather in Europe, it's most likely crap.
Obviously, below, there is more info on what the trojan does, read only if you want info on it. Read More

Been beavering away with a new plugin. I found the greybox script from orangoo.com. It's a very simple script and can be used if the following situations:

•  It does not conflict with pop-up blockers
•  It's only 22 KB!
  
•  It's super easy to setup
•  It's super easy to use
•  You can easily alter the style as it is controlled through CSS

You can use it to pop to open a quick search window.

• Load Google in a 500x500 window
• Here you can have it in a fullscreen window

Obviously, more example at the Orangoo.com.

You can download the S9y script here.

Comments most welcome.

So the BBC has an article on Tesco (UK's biggest retailer) that it was entering the software market, to compete with the likes of Symantec and Microsoft. Haaahhahah

Tesco is to launch a range of budget own-brand PC software, in a move that will pitch the grocery giant against the likes of Microsoft and Symantec.

Tesco said it would offer six packages, including office software, security systems and a photo editing tool.

Britain's biggest retailer said each title would cost less than £20, challenging what it described as the current "high" price of PC software.

Source

Now I would have taken that seriously if Tesco was also producing an Operating System then I would have had a second look.
I decided to have a look to see what they were selling. what software packages. I looked up Formjet Plc. They are a holding company for a group of companies.

Six trading units which currently make up the Formjet group are described in detail on a dedicated area of this site These are . . .

•   Panda Software (UK) distributes Panda Software antivirus and security products in the UK.
•   Ability Software International distributes a powerful suite of office products.
•   FileStream (UK) is involved in applications ranging from the backup of computer resources to highly sophistcated graphics solutions.
•   Software Dialog UK is a specialist security reseller to the corporate marketplace.
•   South Coast Distribution is an established supplier to the OEM market.
•   Ideal Innovations.co.uk is an online marketplace. It services the electronic trading requirements of the Formjet Group and third party vendors.

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